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Christina Applegate made audiences laugh as news anchor Veronica Corningstone in Anchorman and starred as Married With Children‘s Kelly Bundy for 10 years, but that’s not nearly all for the 41-year-old actress.

The mom of two-year-old Sadie Grace LeNoble—a toddler with a “very, very specific fashion sense”—also serves as Creative Partner for FabKids, a clothing company for little ones that was “founded to empower girls to express their individuality through personalized fashions while revolutionizing the shopping experience for mom,” according to its website. We talked to Applegate about her parenting style, her reunion with the Anchorman cast, and her life as a cancer survivor.

On the balancing being a mom and an actress. “Right now, I’m taking some extended time off so that I can just be a stay-at-home mom and be with her, and that’s been really gratifying and incredible. The first year of her life I was doing Up All Night, so I wouldn’t see her very much during the day, and it was really heartbreaking.”

On how she would feel if Sadie wanted to follow in her career path. “My whole thing with her now at this point is, something that I didn’t get to do was just be a kid. And I really want her to have that, so, if she wants to pursue being a performer in any way, then she can study acting, study dance, study music, study art, whatever it is that she wants to do, but we’re not allowed to have money exchanged until she’s 18. That’s the rule of the house right now. So if she wants to be an actress, I want her to be a good actress. I want her to go to acting classes and go be in plays and all of that before money is exchanged for her talent. I want her to have school, I want her to have a good education, all of those things are really important to me. I don’t mind if she does, she just has to do it when she’s an adult.”

On her parenting style. “I’m pretty rigid as far as schedule. I knew I would be like that, but I also am incredibly willing to be flexible with things, too. Just the way that we approach the way we talk to her, the way we teach her, the way we discipline her, it’s a good amalgamation of a little bit of hippie and a little bit of by the book.”

On her role as Creative Partner for FabKids.“I help choose the collections and give ideas based on what I’m seeing my daughter starting to love. It’s really helpful for them that I come and say, hey, Sadie’s really kind of down with this look right now. She loves to be able to twirl, so we need to have skirts that can twirl. She has her own thing, I don’t choose her clothes for her anymore. She goes into her closet in the morning and she picks out her own outfits.”

On staying in touch with her former costars.“The Up All Night-ers are both very busy. I don’t really talk to them anymore. I love them both, I’m really happy for both of them. Maya [Rudolph]’s pregnant, and Will [Arnett]’s got a new show, so everyone’s kind of got their lives going on. As far as the Married people, we keep in contact with each other as much as we can, which is nice. I love them very much.”

On whether she watches her former TV dad Ed O’Neill on Modern Family. “Oh yeah, every week. [It’s] one of my favorite shows. Every day was a story working with Ed. He’s an incredible storyteller. You really could sit and listen to him for hours and laugh and enjoy his stories. I miss that.”

On Up All Night’s cancellation. “It wasn’t really cancelled, it was starting to turn into something different. In the end, we all felt like that wasn’t the original idea. I was a little surprised that it happened sort of abruptly like that. But I think we all knew that it was time to move on.”

On her role in the upcoming movie Anchorman 2, whichwill be released Dec. 20.“We’ve all been sitting here in anticipation of getting that call to finally go back. Because it was 10 years ago, everyone’s gotten to go off and have careers and bigger careers. On top of that, we started to have another generation of fans. We can have our fans that we had in 2004 when the movie came out, and now, because of 10 years, we have these people who were probably 10 years old at that time and are now 20 years old, who are discovering it. The audience is broader and bigger than it was the first time. Even though we wanted to have this happen earlier, I think by the grace of the universe, it happened now. I think this was the perfect time for this movie to come out.”

On reuniting with her costars 10 years later. “Oh it was fantastic, I mean the first table read we had back in February, we were so giddy, all of us. Just so excited to see each other, sograteful, and sohappy to show up to that day at work. It was a really great moment.”

On her body image after cancer [Applegate had breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy in 2008]. “The body that you’ve lived with your whole life is now altered and changed. It takes a long time to embrace it and connect back with that part of your body. It’s a physiological thing, too, whenever you have surgery, your brain disassociates that part of your body. It just does. So it takes awhile to kind of match up the emotional and the intellectual and the physiological parts to make yourself feel kind of whole.”

On if being a cancer survivor has given her a new perspective in life. “The one thing I took away from it was to keep stress at a minimum if possible. I let things really roll off my shoulders a lot more than I used to. I used to pine over things and think about things, and I find that I don’t think anymore. [laughs] I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I don’t ponder anymore, I just try to live pretty in the moment.”